Hello and welcome to this day an esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, September 23rd, 1906, Atlanta is in the midst of four days of violence that would leave dozens of black Atlantis dead.

These are what are referred to as the Atlanta

quote race riots or the Atlanta massacre as it is sometimes referred to.

It is violence at a time when there was a growing amount of violence in the

post reconstruction south and the mix of factors that led to the Atlanta riots was in many ways a familiar script, accusations of sexual violence, yellow journalism, collaboration between white mobs, government forces, black businesses targeted.

But this is also a very Atlanta story and so we will get into that first here to discuss, as

always, are Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there.

Hello Jody.

Hey there.

And a quick shout out to listener Ross, who is from Atlanta, who I've met before,

is a great supporter of the show.

So thank you Ross for suggesting this one.

And so Kelly, I mean, there was a familiar script element to this story which we will get

to and a tragically familiar script element to this story that we will get to. but there's also a very Atlanta element here too.

And so can you just kind of maybe start there

with the picture of what Atlanta is in 1906

and how that sets up this particular moment?

Yeah, Atlanta becomes the new, really capital of the south.

People are flocking to Atlanta to build their businesses to find economic opportunities or political opportunities.

...